Australia

Mar 3 – To Oz

We were up at an ungodly hour this morning to catch the bus to the airport. Our flight was at 7:30am and we had to be there about 2hrs before so we caught the bus at 5am. Our bags were the right weight (yay) and we got on the flight no problem. The flight was uneventful but we were a little delayed arriving. We got through customs no problem but then the bags were delayed coming off the carousel. A whole bunch of other aircrafts had arrived around the same time and there were several huge lines to get out of the baggage zone, we still had to go through bio-screening. Since we had been hiking in NZ we had dirt on our shows and the Australians are as strict as the New Zealanders in controlling foreign organic substances entering the country. We then had to line up to get our shoes cleaned. We didn't get out into the public area until close to 2 hours after our flight had landed. The poor Dutch couple, Monqiue and Ingo, who had been so kind to pick us up from the airport and offer us a place to stay had been waiting for us for over an hour. We felt so bad even though there wasn't much we could have done about it. They drove us to their place where we got to meet Snowy and Juneau who are two Samoyd-Retrievers. They are beautiful! Snowy is 3 and is bigger than Juneau who is 2. Snowy's father was a retriever and looks much more like a Golden Retriever than Juneau whose father was Samoyed. They are both lovely. We had breakfast and spent most of the day chatting with Monique and Ingo. They had plans to go for dinner with some friends of theirs and invited us to join them. We went along with them to an Italian restaurant that had good prices and huge portions. Beau and I shared a pizza and had to take some home for leftovers. Our day started early and was annoying for a little while but ended with new friends.

Mar 4

We slept well last night finally a night in a real bed. We had some breakfast then Beau and Ingo took the dogs for a walk. Monique and Ingo went out for the afternoon to a friends birthday party. Beau and I spent the afternoon doing some research on campervans and set up a few meets. We were pretty lazy most of the afternoon. Once Monique and Ingo returned we went with them to badminton. Every Sunday night there is drop in badminton at the local rec center. We played a game against Monqiue and Ingo as well as played with one other random people. It was a lot of fun. I don't think I've played badminton since the cottage with Elaine, Mike and Kate.

Mar 5 – The HelpX

After breakfast we finished repacking our bags, we were leaving some stuff at Monique and Ingo's, and headed out to catch the train to go to our HelpX for the week. We had been doing some journey planing to figure out our route but as it turns out the schedule we were looking at was for the next train station, not the Diamond Creek one so we missed the train. The next train wasn't for another 40mins so we were a little behind schedule by the time we got on the train. It took about an hour to get into Melbourne CBD. It's quite the metropolis and I am looking forward to exploring it later this week. We got off the train at one of the downtown stations and then hopped on a tram headed for Kew like the HelpX lady told us. We got off at the specified stop then headed down the road. We found the house no problem and could see she needed a lot of help in her yard. We knocked on the door and to our dismay there was no answer. We knocked several times and waited around for about 45min before getting fed up. We couldn't understand it, while we were about 30min late since we missed our train she had specified the times to come and there was a car parked in the driveway. Frustrated we headed back towards the main road. An older gentleman started talking to us asking us where we were from, he knew where we were supposed to be staying. He said there had been two girls staying there recently but he thought the host was a bit of an odd duck. No kidding. Monique and Ingo had given us a mobile phone that one of their previous backpackers had left behind so we bought a SIM card for it and attempted to activate it. I spent an hour on the phone to some moron at Telstra while he tried to verify my identity. Apparently one international passport wasn't good enough for him he needed another form photo identification and it couldn't be my drivers license! Fortunately I have two passports so he finally was able to activate my SIM card although he did say it could take 2-24hrs to become active. We had been hoping to call Monique or Ingo and double check it was okay if we returned to their place. They had already invited us back for after the HelpX. Feeling a little defeated and hungry we stopped into Subway and split a footlong. Then we bought a week long train pass since we want to explore the city this week and we figured we'd be at Monique and Ingo's. We took the tram back into town and through the use of wifi and skype we confirmed the cell was working and bought some credit for it. We got in touch with Ingo who said it was no problem for us to come back to their place tonight. What a relief! We then decided to get in touch with some of the campervan people who were in town and headed off the St Kilda to see a camper van. The van turned out to be a dud. It had a bad set up, hadn't been looked after properly, some strange gimicks with the driving and was smelly. It was good to check it out though since it gives us something to compare it too. We also set up with another couple to see their van tomorrow. We headed back into the CBD and were tired, sore and hungry. I was pretty fed up with hauling my pack around all day and can see how an extra 10kg can really affect your body. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant that was really good, cheap and right across the street from the train station. We then caught a train back to Diamond Creek and turned up back at Monique and Ingo's around 10pm. We hung out with them for a little while, while watching Seinfeld then headed to bed.

Merry Flying Christmas

We survived our flight to Christchurch and our night in the airport.  We had no trouble getting to our house-sit and have settled in well.  The two dogs we are sitting are very sweet. Molly is a Pekingese cross Spaniel and Jackson is a Pomeranian.  I'll post pictures of them soon.

Dec 25 – Merry Flying Christmas

Alarms going off at 4am are never fun... especially when you won't be catching Santa sliding down the chimney. We were up and off the catch a 4:45am shuttle bus to the airport. Unfortunately we weren't all that clear on which airport we were going to so we got off at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. AirAsia doesn't fly out of this airport though. So we had to run for the shuttle bus to the Low Cost Carrier Terminal and of course had to pay for that too, oops. We arrived at the LCCT and went to check in only to find they wouldn't issue our boarding pass until we could prove we had an onward flight out of New Zealand. We hastily logged on to the airports free wifi (yay technology) and booked our onward flight to Melbourne for March 3rd. Hopefully we don't want to stay more or less time than this :S. We finished check in and went through boarding pass control, immigration and security. We picked up a little duty free before finding a seat. We had much less time waiting around than we thought we would. Beau attempting to Skype his parents but the internet was too slow. I found us some buns for breakfast although Beau wasn't to sure about his chicken curry doughnut but I enjoyed my red bean doughnut. Shortly after we boarded for our flight. The aircraft was very nice and very basic, pretty much everything is an add on. It didn't have a plane wide movie although you could rent little personal movie players. The flight was quite empty too but hey it's Christmas. The flight went fairly quickly and I guess we slept a little. We landed in Christchurch around midnight. We cleared customs and bio-security easily. They didn't even ask us about onward travel. I traveled on my British passport and can stay for up to 6 months and Beau on his Canadian can stay for 3 months. Not really sure what the point is in having to have an onward ticket when you can stay for so long. Now we need to kill some time in the airport till the buses start up at 6am.

Dec 26 – The house-sit

It seemed like forever but 6am finally rolled around and we set off the get a bus. We had been given some instructions to catch a bus slightly away from the airport so we didn't have to pay the $7.50 for the bus only the regular fare of $3.20. We did have to change buses once but made it down town. Down town was bizarre after being in Asia. It was deserted. Granted it was 7:30am on boxing day but the bus station is right next to the area that is cordoned off due to the earthquake last February. We wandered a little to find us some breakfast. We found a little mall that had a Subway and split a sub for breakfast. We still had some time to kill so we went into the mall and explored a Zellars like store called Warehouse. We headed back to the bus station and purchased a Metro Card. This gives you a discount on bus fares. We took a bus to Halswell and found the house. We met Tracey there and the two little dogs, Jackson and Molly. Tracey showed us the ropes and we got ourselves settled in. Jackson is a Pomeranian, a sweet little fluff ball, and Molly is a Pekingese cross Spaniel, who is also very sweet. We had a nap on the couch, we've been up over 24hrs with only little naps on the place. After napping we had a short walk to the grocery store and picked up some food for the next few days. We had a nice dinner of lamb, pasta and salad. We also bought some wine and enjoyed a nice glass of red. We last had wine when we were in Canada, actually I tried a glass of Vietnamese wine but it wasn't good. We watched Braveheart, which was on TV. We went to bed fairly late though but we don't have to go anywhere tomorrow!